Valve has moved to dismiss the New York Attorney General’s lawsuit against the company, which claims loot boxes in its games such as Counter-Strike 2 promote illegal gambling and threaten to addict children.
Nah. I actually thought the same at first. I literally asked when this was first announced in the news if it wasn’t basically the same as Pokemon cards.
The problem is this. The company producing the Pokemon cards isn’t I hope actively providing a service to trade or resell them for monetary value based on rarity. Secondary markets exist for that but a first party Pokemon company market doesn’t exist for that.
This is where valve fucked up. They allow you to get a rare drop by chance, trade it for points, and use those points to buy something with real world value. It’s a lot more like pachinko than it is Pokemon cards or baseball cards.
In a casino you buy chips. Those chips can then be traded back to the casino for cash. When you bet on things at the casino you bet chips with the understanding that those chips are work a real world amount of money.
That is what makes gambling illegal in a lot of places. The ability to convert the gambled assets directly into spendable currency.
Pachinko does it a little different. You pay to play and when you win you get little trinkets. The pachinko parlor doesn’t let you trade them for cash or anything else. But you can go next door to a place that will buy those little trinkets for actual cash. Valve shouldn’t let you trade the points for anything with a fixed actual monetary value. Which is likely what they will do going forward if this lawsuit is successful.
Steam wallet funds expressly have no monetary value in the steam user agreement, and it explicitly states in the steam user agreement it’s against their tos to sell items off of their market. So they are covered. Second hand markets exist but it’s without valves support or consent, they aren’t breaking the law. A court can’t compel valve to restrict user freedom (trading digital items) because they don’t shut down websites that they have no ability to shut down.
Valve allows users to cash in on the virtual items they have won in two ways. Users can sell the items they won through Valve’s own virtual marketplace, the Steam Community Market, where they can use the proceeds to buy other video games, video game hardware, and other virtual items. Users can also connect their Valve accounts to third-party marketplaces where the virtual items can be sold directly for cash. The OAG’s investigation found that Valve facilitates and even assists these third-party marketplaces in their operations.
All three games feature an optional mechanic where players can pay real money in exchange for “loot boxes”: a virtual item that drops a randomly-generated piece of cosmetic gear that can be used in-game. Most of these items have no mechanical impact and are there strictly for looks, such as silly hats in TF2 or neon-painted “weapon skins” in CS2.
Despite their lack of actual effect, loot boxes and item trading are both an extraordinarily lucrative market for Valve. Virtual items for these three games have been sold for staggering amounts of real money. One estimate cited by the AG’s office indicates that the market for Counter-Strike skins alone was worth over $4.3 billion as of last year.
While Valve absolutely benefits from the strangely frenetic market for virtual items in CS2, TF2, and Dota 2 — it sells these loot boxes in the first place, and hosts the secondary market for them via the in-app Steam Marketplace — the occasionally shocking prices for these items is part of a player-created economy. The lawsuit may be partially aimed in the wrong direction.
There is no evidence I have seen that Valve supports 3rd party market places, and like I said the steam user agreement explicitly forbids them. There is nothing illegal about their own market place because you are paid in steam wallet funds and steam wallet funds cannot be exchanged for real world money. This case is going to flop, valve will win this one.
Valve then allows the contents of loot boxes to be traded for platform currency.
Unfortunately that platform currency has a real monetary value because it can be traded for real monetary goods because you can use it to buy a steam deck of other valve hardware.
It is this direct chain of events that make this illegal gambling because this is not something you can do with baseball cards or Pokemon cards.
three core elements common to all gambling laws: (1) consideration, (2) chance, and (3) prize. So long as one of these three elements is not met, a loot box system is not “gambling”. The “chance” element is inevitably met in any form of loot boxes, but the “consideration” element can arguably be avoided by making loot boxes acquirable only by exchanging virtual currency that itself arguably has no “value”, and the “prize” element can arguably be avoided by making the loot box drops account-locked. Where the loot box drop cannot be transferred, sold, or “cashed out”, there is arguably no “prize” no matter how rare the drop is or how useful it is for in-game purposes.[1]
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Nah. I actually thought the same at first. I literally asked when this was first announced in the news if it wasn’t basically the same as Pokemon cards.
The problem is this. The company producing the Pokemon cards isn’t I hope actively providing a service to trade or resell them for monetary value based on rarity. Secondary markets exist for that but a first party Pokemon company market doesn’t exist for that.
This is where valve fucked up. They allow you to get a rare drop by chance, trade it for points, and use those points to buy something with real world value. It’s a lot more like pachinko than it is Pokemon cards or baseball cards.
In a casino you buy chips. Those chips can then be traded back to the casino for cash. When you bet on things at the casino you bet chips with the understanding that those chips are work a real world amount of money.
That is what makes gambling illegal in a lot of places. The ability to convert the gambled assets directly into spendable currency.
Pachinko does it a little different. You pay to play and when you win you get little trinkets. The pachinko parlor doesn’t let you trade them for cash or anything else. But you can go next door to a place that will buy those little trinkets for actual cash. Valve shouldn’t let you trade the points for anything with a fixed actual monetary value. Which is likely what they will do going forward if this lawsuit is successful.
Steam wallet funds expressly have no monetary value in the steam user agreement, and it explicitly states in the steam user agreement it’s against their tos to sell items off of their market. So they are covered. Second hand markets exist but it’s without valves support or consent, they aren’t breaking the law. A court can’t compel valve to restrict user freedom (trading digital items) because they don’t shut down websites that they have no ability to shut down.
There is no evidence I have seen that Valve supports 3rd party market places, and like I said the steam user agreement explicitly forbids them. There is nothing illegal about their own market place because you are paid in steam wallet funds and steam wallet funds cannot be exchanged for real world money. This case is going to flop, valve will win this one.
Valve makes you buy a key to open the loot boxes.
Valve then allows the contents of loot boxes to be traded for platform currency.
Unfortunately that platform currency has a real monetary value because it can be traded for real monetary goods because you can use it to buy a steam deck of other valve hardware.
It is this direct chain of events that make this illegal gambling because this is not something you can do with baseball cards or Pokemon cards.